Getting started with VNC Enterprise Edition for Mac OS X

To install VNC Server Enterprise Edition for Mac OS X, double-click on the downloaded installer and follow the on-screen instructions. You will need to restart your computer in order to run the VNC Server in Service-Mode, but you can start using it in User-Mode immediately.

When you first install the software, you will be prompted to install a license key. To install a license key at any other time, run the Install license key program from the VNC Server folder of Applications. You will be asked to enter an administrator password before a license key can be entered.

Enter the license key exactly as it appears in the email you received when you purchased the software (copy and paste is best). If you would like to try the software before buying a license, then you can get a free 30-day trial.

If VNC Server is running, there will be an icon on the right-hand side of the menu bar. Under normal circumstances, this icon has a white background; however, when someone is connected to your computer, the background colour of the icon changes to black to inform you of this. It is not possible to remove the status bar icon without closing VNC Server and disabling connections to your computer. Note that, in Service-Mode, VNC Server continues to run even if no-one is logged in locally. In this case, the status bar icon will appear when someone logs in.

As well as providing a visual indication of whether or not someone is currently connected to your computer, most administrative functions are accessed using the status bar menu.

To configure the server, click on the status bar icon and select Preferences... If you are configuring VNC Server in Service-Mode, then you will be prompted to enter administrative credentials.

It is intentionally the case that, if VNC Server is unconfigured, then no connections will be accepted. This is for security reasons.

You must, at a minumum, configure your VNC Server's authentication and generate secure encryption keys before you will be able to connect. There are three authentication options:

• No Authentication—With this option, all connections to the server will be accepted without needing a username or password. This option should be used only with extreme caution; it should not be used unless the host network is known to be completely secure.
• VNC Password Authentication—With this option, all connections must supply a valid password before being accepted. This is the default authentication mode, but no password is set by default. To set the password, click the Configure button.
• Mac Authentication—With this option, all connections must supply a user name and password that are valid on the computer running VNC Server. To configure which users are allowed to access the server, and the level of access they are granted, click the Configure button.

The Connections tab controls the port numbers through which the VNC Server is accessed and, optionally, the IP addresses from which connections are accepted. Note that port numbers below 1024 are reserved by the operating system for privileged processes and are not available unless you are running in Service-Mode.

• Accept connections on port—Controls the port on which connections are accepted. Uncheck this option to disable connections to the server.
• Disconnect idle clients after—Controls the length of time after which clients from which no inputs have been received will be disconnected. Set this to zero to disable idle timeouts.
• Serve Java viewer via HTTP on port—Controls the port on which the Java viewer is served to web browsers.

It is also possible to configure a list of approved and/or blacklisted IP addresses. The details of this are beyond the scope of this guide; see the section entitled Access control: Allow, deny or query addresses in the VNC Server Enterprise for Windows documentation.

The Sharing tab controls how VNC Server handles multiple simultaneous connections.

• Always treat new connections as shared—New connections are treated as shared, regardless of the preference of the VNC Viewer.
• Never treat new connections as shared—New connections are treated as non-shared (private), regardless of the preference of the VNC Viewer.
• Use client's preferred setting—The preference of the VNC Viewer is used to determine whether or not a new connection should be treated as shared.

The Non-shared connections replace existing ones option controls the behaviour of non-shared sessions. If checked, then any existing connection will be closed when an incoming non-shared connection is received. If unchecked, then incoming non-shared connections will rejected if there is an existing connection.

The Misc tab contains various options that are not covered by any of the other tabs.

• Accept pointer events from clients—Uncheck this option to ignore mouse input from VNC Viewers.
• Accept keyboard events from clients—Uncheck this option to ignore keyboard input from VNC Viewers.
• Accept clipboard events from viewers—Uncheck this option to ignore clipboard changes sent by VNC Viewers.
• Send clipboard updates to clients—Uncheck this option if you don't want changes to the local clipboard to be sent to VNC Viewers.
• Share files with clients—Uncheck this option if you want to disable transferring of files to and from this computer using VNC. If file transfer is enabled, it is accessed via the status bar menu.
• Only use protocol 3.3—Check this option if you are having trouble connecting with legacy or third party viewers. You will not be able to use any advanced features such as encryption or Mac Authentication; in most cases it is better to upgrade legacy or third party viewers to Enterprise Edition.
• Enable full debug logging—Check this option if you are encountering a problem. Detailed debug information will be logged to the server error log. Ordinarily, only errors and details of connections are logged.

In order to connect to your computer, you will need to know its IP address. To display the current IP address, hover the mouse pointer over the VNC status bar icon. If your server is configured correctly, this will indicate whether the server is running in User- or Service-Mode and tell you its IP address (however, see our port forwarding FAQ for further information if your computer is connected to the Internet through an external firewall or NAT router).

If you have changed the Accept connections on port setting, then you will need to specify this when connecting with VNC Viewer. For example, if you have configured server snoopy to accept connections on port 80, then you would specify snoopy::80 when connecting. Note the double-colon syntax; a single colon denotes a desktop number—for example snoopy:1 refers to desktop number 1 on snoopy, which accepts connections on port 5901.

If your server is misconfigured and is unable to accept connections, then instead of your IP address, the tool-tip will instead say Not accepting connections. In this case, check the server error log for more information.